Great Article on Internet Marketing - Kevin O'Brien

August 2008 Franchising World
E-mail marketing and online surveys are excellent tools for communicating with a franchised business’ customers.
By Kevin O’Brien
The Internet has brought about tremendous change in the way people find and communicate with businesses. Growth in technology has fostered the development of countless new Web-based business tools and services that help people manage their businesses. There are solutions now for everything from online advertising to accounting to collaboration and even employee-performance reviews. While all of those technologies can help to streamline manual processes and cut costs, they aren’t necessarily going to result in increased business and profitability.
The key for many businesses to achieve measurable results is how they market to their current customers. Good examples of online services that are helping thousands of franchises to strengthen customer relationships and deliver real business results are e-mail marketing and online surveys or polls.In this article are some examples of effective e-mail marketing and online surveys from successful franchise owners and discuss best practices to help take franchise businesses to the next level with their online marketing campaigns.
E-mail Your Way to Profit By combining the ease of e-mail with the power of the Internet, franchise businesses quickly, easily and cost-effectively deliver professional marketing campaigns to their targeted e-mail lists of customers. The results are not only measurable; they often generate increased business leads and sales.
E-mail marketing is one of the most effective methods for generating leads as compared to other marketing methods. In fact, the Direct Marketing Association claims that for every dollar spent on e-mail marketing, marketers can expect an estimated $48.29 in return on investment. With results like these, businesses can’t afford not to give it a try. Today, with the help of e-mail marketing vendors, it is easier than ever to send out professional-looking e-mail campaigns. Companies should look for a service that provides a full-featured solution, including a template driven authoring environment that makes it easy to produce a branded e-mail message, tracking tools to measure a campaign’s effectiveness, automatic e-mail list updates, subscribe and unsubscribe options and more.
Free vs. Function Some business owners may wonder why they can’t just send out e-mails using their existing e-mail service. They can, but why would they? Standard e-mail services weren’t designed for one-to-many communications and, therefore, lack the capabilities provided by professional e-mail marketing tools. Some of these features and benefits include: • Trusted relationships with the Internet Service Providers that support high-deliverability rates,
• Compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act which requires that every e-mail has unsubscribe functionality,
• Robust reporting on deliverability, open rates and click-through rates so that franchises can measure a campaign’s success,
• Professionally designed e-mail templates that help to protect a brand, and
• Support for html and translation to plain text to ensure that the e-mail maintains a professional appearance when it reaches the in-box.
If franchise organizations are using their regular e-mail service to send out marketing communications, chances are they’re not compliant with spam laws and are putting their subscribers’ information at risk—not a good way to showcase the business or the brand. And don’t forget about results. Using a standard e-mail service, half or more of the e-mails could be blocked by spam filters or may be unable to be read by the recipient due to the lack of html support or plain text translation. For a reasonable monthly fee, franchise companies could use a professional e-mail marketing service that generates proven ROI such as new customers, increased sales and a loyal customer base.
Numbers Don’t Lie Still in doubt? Just ask Ythan Lax, an owner of two Little Gym franchises in New York who credits e-mail marketing with helping to establish a solid customer base for his second franchise location with just one e-mail campaign. But getting to that point wasn’t easy. For years, Lax sent out bulk e-mails using his standard e-mail client. He’d cut and paste blocks of 150 e-mail addresses into the “bcc” field then wait for 20 minutes while the e-mails were sent. It would take him an hour and a half to send one e-mail.
When the Little Gym franchise announced it was using e-mail marketing and was extending the service to any of its franchisees who wanted it for a low monthly fee, Lax signed up immediately. A few days later he sent out his first e-mail campaign and registered 22 new members. Shortly after Lax sent out an e-mail about a new holiday camp which required that members enroll immediately to reserve their space. At his new location in Greece, N.Y. he had an astonishing 99 members click on the link and 97 enrolled within the two-week enrollment period. Says Lax, “With [e-mail marketing], I can send a professionally designed e-newsletter that gets real results for my business. Plus, it now takes me only minutes to send something out!”
Listen to Customers with Online Surveys or Polls While e-mail marketing is an easy and affordable way to communicate messages to customers, it doesn’t allow the sender to hear what its customers may think about the business. Does the franchise know how its customers feel about the latest product offerings? Is the level of services being delivered meeting customers’ expectations? Are franchise companies confident that they’re providing customers the type of information they expect from e-mail newsletters? These questions and many more can be easily asked, and answered, by soliciting customers for their feedback. This may sound like a daunting task, but with today’s user-friendly, online survey tools which may include a poll feature, it’s easier than one might expect. Whether a franchised business is seeking a quarterly pulse-check or frequent check-ins with its customers, an online survey tool could be the answer. There are several options to choose from, and in some cases, an e-mail marketing provider may also offer an integrated online survey product. Be sure the tool chosen offers comprehensive reporting features to indicate which customers responded and what the responses are. This information will help determine future business decisions.Before beginning an online survey, it’s important to keep the following guidelines in mind:
• Identify the objective of the survey: Is there a specific problem that requires fixing? Or is it a matter of taking your customers’ pulse to see what they think of your business?
• Select your audience: Depending on the objective, a business may only want to target a specific group of customers at one time.
• Define success: How much time will customers be allowed to respond? How many resources will indicate that the survey is a success?
Once these factors are established to send and measure your online survey, its time to develop the questions. This is probably the most challenging part of survey development. Sure, one could just throw a few open-ended questions together and send it out, but the responses received will be less valuable. The objective is to gather specific information to help identify customers’ interests and preferences, as well as products or services they’re interested in now and in the future.
The Results Are In ... Now What? An important step that many people forget when soliciting customer feedback is to respond and take action because customers need to know that their opinions have been heard. A Midwest-based home-food-service franchise added a successful new product line based on the feedback they received from one survey. The company regularly uses online surveys to gauge customer satisfaction and gather feedback on their services and products. Following a survey in which they asked questions designed to enlist information on their customers’ lifestyles, the franchise learned many of their customers are parents of young children. To better meet their customer’s needs, the company designed a new child-friendly menu to complement their existing products. The new menu drew rave reviews from current customers and led to numerous referrals. Arguably, the most important element of an online survey campaign is what to do with the results. Perhaps the franchise’s customers would prefer a monthly newsletter rather than a quarterly one. Or maybe the new service being planned isn’t as pressing a priority as one thought. It’s better to find out now. Perhaps the franchise brand is suffering in one area or customers wish there was a second location in the next town. This is valuable information, and if used properly, as in the example above, can affect the future success far beyond the next e-mailed newsletter.
A Match Made in Franchise HeavenSuccessful marketing communications include content that is relevant and interesting to the recipient, offers valuable information or advice and provides an opportunity to give feedback. By using online surveys, franchises are able to glean direct feedback from their customers—feedback that can influence their business in a myriad of ways. In turn, franchises that take that insight and apply it to their e-mail marketing campaigns will reap the rewards of an engaged customer base. Both e-mail marketing and online surveys are excellent tools for communicating with a franchised business’s customers. Easy to use, affordable and effective, these online tools make marketing a breeze. Used together, these tools allow companies to start a valuable dialogue with their customers that are likely to result in a loyal customer base and an improved bottom line.
Kevin O’Brien is senior manager, franchise partner programs for Constant Contact. He can be reached at kobrien@constantcontact.com.